Logz.io product marketing manager Daniel Berman and the Logz.io marketing team  place a significant amount of importance on creating and regularly publishing content that builds trust, brand awareness, and sales.

With its comprehensive and scalable open-source based platform, the company is a leader in modern application monitoring, troubleshooting, and security, and must be in front of customers with key technical content. To achieve this, their blog is a repository of regular useful educational posts and thought-leadership pieces to engage potential clients.

While Logz.io produces a substantial portion of their content in-house, some areas require expert-based content. Furthermore, as Logz.io started to see measurable success from their efforts, they wanted to remain consistent with their output. Thus, there was a desire to extend their team by bringing in outside support to help produce more blog posts on a consistent basis as well as providing expert tips, comparisons, long-form white papers and analyses.

So, Logz.io turned to IOD to help continue to create technical marketing blog posts at the scale they needed. As Logz.io grew, their content needs matured as well. And because they had already built up a trusted partnership with IOD, they were able to turn to the company for more specific and in-depth content to meet their growing demands.

Here are a few reasons why Logz.io benefited from a partnership with IOD and why you may want to consider a third-party content creator to help drive your business as well.

Meaningful Content Drives Traffic

The original reason Logz.io contacted IOD was to produce content that would drive traffic to their website via monthly blog posts. These posts range from 1200-2000 words and serve to address a common issue or challenge that Logz.io knows its target audience face. Each post also comes with some solid background and, of course, a solution.

“Companies just starting a blog will need to prove a constant and scheduled pipeline of articles. IOD can definitely help out with that,” Berman says.

IOD recruits top talent to form an expert + editor team, combining the hands-on experience and knowledge of a tech expert with the professional writing abilities of a seasoned editor. This duo then works together with Logz.io’s team to deliver relevant pieces. This results in consistent key content delivered via a fast and predictable pipeline.

Who Benefits From Expert-Based Content?

Any company that has a marketing strategy based on SEO and organic traffic will benefit from expert-based content for their blog. This includes B2B and SaaS companies or any group targeting engineers.

Companies that don’t already have a blog will benefit from expert-based content as they will need to position themselves from the get-go as a knowledgeable and trusted resource.

With the support of an IOD Content Strategist, companies can create the editorial calendar required to maintain a consistent and scheduled pipeline of key content.

Established companies like Logz.io are more likely to have their own internal personnel driving content strategy and planning. But even those groups that already have their own pros contributing to content can benefit from added resources and capabilities. After all, these companies have a company to run, too.

Rich Gated Content for Maximum Leads

Today, IOD helps Logz.io to produce content to drive traffic to the Logz.io website with blogs and in-depth white papers–ideal for enabling Logz.io to target users at different stages of the marketing funnel. These latter pieces are over 2,000 words and give a more detailed look at a given topic, including background, challenges, and solutions.

White papers will typically focus in on key areas for a given client. For example, IOD has written on topics for Logz.io such as security requirements for DevOps, a crucial area in application development, or the challenges of log management for IT today.

Build Trust and Sales Through Brand Awareness

Three years into the collaboration, there was yet an additional way for IOD to help Logz.io articles hit home: bylined content with an industry influencer.

Superheroes of Content: Influencers

IOD excels at providing brand-name bylines; that is, writers who bring their own following and credibility to a given topic. These influencers can also provide invaluable third-party validation. Their expertise enables them to quickly grasp the value of new technology, provide authentic feedback, and even collaborate with a client on future content if they believe in the quality and promise of a given product. This in turn adds even more credibility to a company blog, helps solidify trust in a brand and, ultimately, brings those desired conversions.

Logz.io has benefited from IOD tech experts such as Yan Cui and John Fahl, who not only write objective expert-based content, but also provide that key byline for Logz.io pieces. Having access to such brand names in the world of tech has been a great advantage for Logz.io as their content needs have matured. And it has been a key benefit as they sought to gain a greater level of trust from their clients by offering material on specific topics written by more high-profile experts in the field.

Logz.io still makes sure its own people offer content that is related to their core business, such as in regard to Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana (ELK) Stack where they are seen as thought leaders. But when it wants an influencer on the byline answering key questions on a hot topic, they know they can turn to IOD for the right brand name.

Partner Up

Creating long-form content over a six- to 12-month timeframe, with strategic goals in mind, is not an easy task. You need a partner in the process.

There is a lot more to an authentic content plan than just a one-off piece. Even a single post is a process in and of itself. And it can be difficult to manage a writer, let alone an entire content pipeline, including expert researchers if needed. This is the reason why Logz.io and others will choose a full-production content provider such as IOD over, say, a freelance writer with experience in marcom.

After all, as Logz.io knows, even just finding the right writer in the first place can be a pain.

“Unless a writer actually knocks on your door, that whole outreach process of finding somebody with the right expertise and knowledge, IOD takes that pain away,” says Berman.

There is also the added issue of alignment. The messaging and tone of any outside content need to align with the client’s own internal content.

This serves brand awareness and consistency and is why marketing departments often look for not just pro writers but top-notch editors as well.

It’s simply exceedingly rare to get both an expert writer and editor in one individual, Berman says. This is another reason why companies such as Logz.io look to IOD to handle the entire writing process–from working with a client on an authentic content plan and finding the right writers to providing editing and channel management for a content pipeline as well.

Then, there’s the matter of an SEO pro—or not. If you have a company driven by organic traffic, you need someone with the proper knowledge to cover the technical expertise on a given topic. This means someone who can create content that hits on all the right keywords. Having a writer who can do this means not having to spend additional money on a separate SEO pro.

Building up a relationship with the right partner to handle the content creation process and its various elements is key for any marketing department today that’s focused on long-form content over the long term. And with this relationship comes the trust that your content provider can rise to any challenge—both now and three years from now.

Summary

At the end of the day, industry leading companies such as Logz.io are looking to drive website traffic, build trust and brand awareness, and boost sales. And to achieve these results, they need engaging, informative pieces that connect with their audience. IOD provides content strategists, expert writers, and top editors who can effectively deliver key content across a wide range of topics in a consistent and timely manner as well as a proper, long-term plan—a timeline of content–for consistent results.

Tech companies today need to know that they have a partner over the long haul. This way, as they grow and their content demands change, they can turn to a trusted source who knows their company, product, audience, and goals. Berman closes by saying,

“We expect IOD to find a writer or an expert on any topic I give them and they execute on that well.”

“IOD’s uniqueness is that they have a lot of experts on exactly the topics that we need to write about…. People write us all the time offering writing services. I don’t even give a glance because we are happy with IOD.”

About Logz.io
Logz.io is an intelligent and scalable machine data analytics platform built on ELK & Grafana that empowers engineers to monitor, troubleshoot, and secure mission-critical applications more effectively. Customers like Turner Broadcasting, Intel, and Rent-A-Center use Logz.io to analyze machine data at scale, driving higher reliability and spending less time troubleshooting issues while decreasing overall costs.

About IOD
IOD (iamondemand) is a boutique content creation and research organization with deep, hands-on expertise in cloud, devops, data engineering, cybersecurity, and AI.

IOD’s wealth of knowledge is thanks to a marketplace of savvy subject matter experts, skilled writers, and veteran editors that work together as agile teams to create [top.content] assets for our customers.